An NCIC Milestone

Washington, D.C.
March 23, 2002

FBI National Press Office(202) 324-3691

On March 15, 2002, the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) set a new record for transactions processed on a single day, with 3,295,587. The average response time for these transactions was .1467 second. Response time is the time it takes for the NCIC to receive, process, and respond to an inquiry. 2002 year-to-date averages have been 2.8 million transactions per day with an average response time of.16 second.

NCIC, which was implemented by the FBI in 1967, processed 2 million transactions during its entire first year of operation. Recent average daily transactions were approximately 1 million per day in 1991, and 2.1 million per day in 1999.

The most recent generation of NCIC became operational on July 11, 1999 at the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia. A recent hardware upgrade to the NCIC system is responsible for this significant improvement in performance.

NCIC is a computerized index of criminal justice information (i.e.- criminal record history information, fugitives, stolen properties, missing persons). It is available to Federal, state, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies and is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.